The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Review (PS5) | Push Square

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The Lord of the Rings: Gollum poses itself as an epic quest across the treacherous realms of Middle-earth, where an inner conflict will rage inside the mind of one halfling. Of course we refer to the split-personality of both Smeagol and Gollum, an integral character across both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings stories. Filling in the blanks between both of those tales, Daedalic's third-person stealth platformer will let you take control of the titular menace as he continues his never-ending search for his precious ring. Sadly, the only precious thing about our time with Gollum was the hope that one day we'd eventually finish the game, uninstall it from our PS5, and never think about it again.

As you may have been able to surmise then, we're not big fans of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. Across its roughly 10-hour campaign, we were subjected to some of the most dated and disastrously dull stealth and platforming segments that we've seen in a game in quite some time. In fact, we didn't even get through all the story chapters. Nine chapters in (out of 10), we encountered a game breaking bug that stalled our progression and left us unable to complete the game before embargo. We reached out to Daedalic Entertainment for any help in this matter, but as of writing are yet to hear back.

By the time this game-breaking bug emerged from the shadows, however, we were hardly surprised. That's because from start to (not quite) finish, we experienced a bevy of bugs that not only impeded our experience, but led to several game crashes and fresh app restarts: catching on invisible objects; getting stuck in death loops; characters disappearing from the game's cutscenes; and being unable to interact with vital mission objects.